Happy 50th Birthday, Mr. President!
In honor of the occasion…and to shamelessly promote my talents…I’ve done a birthchart reading of Barack Obama over on kristo.com…
Normally, I do birthcharts as more extensive readings on mp3, but this horoscope makes for awfully interesting reading…
You be the judge of whether it’s politically correct or not.
I think it’s fascinating astrology…
Watching the entire Tour de France this year was both a blessing and a curse…
on the one hand, it was a pleasure to watch elite athletes competing in such an over-the-top event…
the race went on for hours nearly every day for 3 weeks, and tuning in each day was a hugely comforting routine…
on the other hand, with plenty of my own serious work to do, tuning in each day was an excuse to avoid the demons of the proverbial blank sheet of paper…
I don’t do multi-tasking very well, and keeping an eye on the race while trying to write wasn't too smart…
but then again, there was Johnny Hoogerland…
one hell of a competitor…
and somebody I couldn't help but admire…
There are plenty of horoscope readings for Amy Winehouse out there, and they all seem to be using 12 Noon as her birth time, since her official time of birth is not publicly known.
It's certainly a valid approach…
but I've created a unique form of birthchart that reads the influence of the Moon over the planets for the entire day…not just 12 noon…
it's how I do readings when a birth time is unknown…
it's also valid for providing another, and deeper, intuitive insight when the time IS known…
although I had never had the occasion to hear her sing, the pathos of her death intrigued me…
and through this reading alone, I'm sincerely impressed by her huge and generous spirit.
Her enormous talent is there, too…
it's amazing…
you can read my take her horoscope here…
Some time in the early or mid-70s, when I was home on break from medical school, and my brother was an undergraduate, he showed me a poem he had to interpret as part of an English class assignment.
I don’t remember if he specifically asked for my help; in fact, I don’t remember anything he said, but I DO remember interpreting the poem.
Sometime later, curious as to what had transpired in class, I asked him what his teacher said about the interpretation. I remember him saying that the teacher had thought the interpretation was completely off the mark, and that the poem meant absolutely no such thing in terms of what I had suggested.
At this point, I also remember feeling surprised and making some arrogant remark or other.
Of course, I was disappointed.
I wanted feedback – and strokes – and the abruptness and finality of this dismissal struck me as somewhat narrow-minded, but that was none of my business.
On a fundamental level, I didn’t need to be told that I was right.
As far as I was concerned, the metaphor I had found was apt.
And pardon the simile / cliché, but it fit the poem like a glove.
Well…at least I thought so.
Because I was young and doubted that another metaphor would fit better, you can understand my hubris.
These days, my feeling is that if other metaphors fit and appeal more to other ideological or personal tastes, then so be it.
What strikes me today is that not only was I satisfied with my own interpretation – and in an unusually authoritative way – but that had I found such immense pleasure in the process of interpretation.
At the time, I let all of that pleasure go.
I had a medical career to pursue.
It would be, perhaps, 15 years before I would return to that pleasure and tentatively begin to pursue it.
Now, about 35 years later, I find that the work of interpretation – reading between the lines – is (and always was) my calling.
Here, then, is that poem followed by my line-by-line interpretation.
Before now, I had never written this interpretation down, but it has been with me ever since that one evening with my brother.
At some point during the process of thinking about the successive images of spring, and mud, and marbles, it became clear to me that interpreting spring as a metaphor for birth made the most sense.
And, lest you think I was influenced by my eventual profession as ob/gyn, this interpretation came at least 5 years before I even began my training as an obstetrician.
So, with the concept of Birth as the metaphoric theme, what is
in Just-
and why is it on a separate line?
my sense about this says that it’s one word, i.e. “unjust” as well as “in just.
In just implies immediacy as in “just now…”
which is the very moment of birth…
an archetypal paradox of simultaneous hopeful beginnings, and wistful endings i.e. the very moment that ends our prenatal paradise.
And it’s this ending, as experienced in our moments-old post-natal consciousness, that would be felt as unjust.
Why else do we cry…except for that impersonally applied smack on our upside-down butt (and something I’ve never seen done, nor done myself, professionally speaking)?
spring when the world is mud-
spring, of course, is the metaphoric time when Nature is busy with births…
lambing, and so-forth.
mud is an apt metaphor for a nicely rich, moist, and messy environment…
something like an endometrium…or a placenta…
“when” is the world like this?
just before birth, naturally.
luscious the little
this line doesn’t seem to stand on its own, but it bridges the gap between two separate realities…
mud-luscious takes us back to the placenta
and we’re certainly little at that moment…
but little lame leads us into the world of that strange grownup…
a world in which we are almost literally lame ourselves.
lame balloonman
lame, in Latin, is Claudius…
but while Oedipus means swollen foot in Greek, I think the freudian concept has some comic relevance here.
in any case, who is this balloonman?
he seems a bit unsavory, even though he’s just handicapped…
does the balloon business refer to the edematous swelling of his feet…
he’s the adult here, and the poem refers to children later on…
he clearly has something that children want…
but there’s this un-just / injustice business…
if he has something to do with birth, then he’s either father (as a character in our oedipal drama) or obstetrician (as the man who collects children around him) or some deity who’s responsible for the whole shebang.
whistles far and wee
and so, this balloon-selling whistler would have to be the one responsible for calling the children out of paradise and into the cold, cruel world…
something of a pied piper…but not simply that…
in any case, we all come…
and eddieandbill come
twins, perhaps…
pairs of opposites…
but all of us, naturally
running from marbles and
this is one of my favorite images, and perhaps the thing that really did it for me in suggesting Birth…
and that’s because one has to get into a fetal position to play marbles…
enough said…
piracies and its
piracies would mean being out on the high seas…
and floating in amniotic fluid is where we do all of our prenatal playing…
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
amniotic fluid, again…
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
now, this lame whistler is queer and old…
most definitely a less savory character than before…
some strange old deity…
not just to us as neonates…
but he remains that way to us even as adults, doesn’t he…?
he has this power to whistle…
and we are powerless to resist…
instead, we even come willingly…
trustingly…
no matter that he’s the apparent cause of this in/un-justice…
the sexual undertones of growing up are impossible to ignore, but he’s not just some sexual predator…
he’s simply elderly in the way we tend to view the aged when we’re very, very young
and bettyandisbel come dancing
the Yin to our Yang…
all of us…
and this time, dancing…
alive and kicking, as it were…
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
hop-scotch being another one of our prenatal activities…
letting everyone (especially mom) know that we’re busy playing…
and of course, that jump-rope is our umbilical cord…
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
and now, finally, this lame, queer, old balloonman is also goat-footed…
which would make him Pan…who, according to sources cited in Wikipedia, is connected to fertility and the season of spring.
Birth is a complex, archetypal motif…
and with spring as a metaphor for birth, the poem would then be ascribing to birth (and to Pan) the epithet “Unjust.”
And this darker concept is something more in tune with the philosophy of Silenius, the drunken, old sensualist…who is connected to Pan through various permutations of the Satyrs…
According to another Wikipedia source, Silenius is not only the teacher and faithful companion of Dionysus, but he shared with King Midas a pessimistic philosophy: “That the best thing for a man is not to be born, and if already born, to die as soon as possible.”
But it’s not simply Birth that we’re dealing with, and this is where my experience as an obstetrician can’t help but intrude.
This balloonMan personifies the call to birth.
He’s the mysterious force behind that moment when labor pains begin – the force that tells the uterus to begin the contractions that must irrevocably end our prenatal idyll.
So, as the mysterious force of Nature responsible for ending our nine month paradise, he’s not just physiology.
Not according to the poets, anyway.
But THAT’s why he’s considered unjust.
The poem is written from an adult perspective, and according to the title, it carries a tinge of resentment towards birth and the force of Nature that requires it.
It’s also a nostalgic musing about our lost pre- and peri-natal innocence that, interestingly and of course, Oedipally, ignores the perspective of the mother. She too hears the balloonman’s whistle and probably agrees with the “unjust” sentiment, but certainly for her own painful reasons.
Finally, this Pan character, this personification of the call to birth, is carrying balloons – balloons being almost the exact shape of a pregnant uterus. It’s as if he’s a kind of god (or saint) carrying his attribute – the sign by which he can be identified – making him a sort of natural, albeit comically accoutred, obstetrician.
Of course, according to that Wikipedia source, Pan is also the god of theatrical criticism.
As such, maybe he should be carrying a Playbill or some other attribute to clearly identify himself.
Perhaps, even, that’s what Cummings was thinking when, in the program to his first play, HIM, he provided a warning to the audience:
“Relax and give the play a chance to strut its stuff—relax, stop wondering what it’s all ‘about’—like many strange and familiar things, Life included, this Play isn’t ‘about,’ it simply is. Don’t try to enjoy it, let it try to enjoy you. DON’T TRY TO UNDERSTAND IT, LET IT TRY TO UNDERSTAND YOU.”
I suppose then, that Cummings was also commenting on the odd relationship between one’s literary babies and the necessity of critics…but the poem was published in 1920, and the play first performed in 1928.
Even so…this Pan / Silenius darkness that we’re born into JUST is…
If we can’t understand the pessimism, the physiology, or the poetry we can certainly do our best to relax and let it understand us…
whatever he meant.
kristo
I’ve just posted my interpretation of a recurring dream reported on Dr. Mark Dillof’s blog…
He calls it the Mysterious Mac Dream, and it begins like this:
“The dream is always basically the same. I’m working at my computer when a strange application takes over, causing it to freeze or to crash. I would then be required to restart my computer.”
go on over to his blog to read the dream for yourself, read my interpretation, and maybe try your own hand at an interpretation…
he’s even offering a prize…
You can find it here…
hey…even Jung had difficulty interpreting his own dreams…
free Ai Weiwei, goddamit!
Hooray!
It’s the first day of Spring!
The Vernal Equinox.
The day on which the amount of daylight equals the amount of darkness.
So what does the Vernal Equinox have to do with that wild astrology controversy over Ophiuchus some midwestern newspaper brought up back in January?
Well, actually…just about everything.
First, let me (briefly) be master of the obvious…
From now until the first day of Summer, the days will continue to get longer.
On that day, otherwise known as the Summer Solstice, the length of the day reaches its peak and thereafter begins to decline, until the Autumnal Equinox.
You know…
the first day of Fall…
And so we have these pivotal days in the year…
and between them, we have the seasons…
This is something we need neither an astronomer nor an astrologer…and not even a journalist to inform us of.
So…getting back to that Vernal Equinox business…
Well, for simple, theoretical, astrologic purposes, that day was once and for all fixed as the day that the Sun entered Aries.
Kinda like the way we chose December 25th to mark the birth of Christ…
except that we really meant to celebrate his birthday on the Winter Solstice…
but hey…isn't that supposed to be the shortest day of the year???
And doesn't that day kinda hover and move around December 21st a little bit?
Well…just tuck that bit of Savior reference away for awhile and we'll get back to THAT later.
It's important!
This mixture of seasonal reality and shared calendar appointments (like the birth of Aries and the birth of Christ) is all fine and dandy, except for the fact that the Sun doesn't enter Aries on the Vernal Equinox any longer…
and hasn't done so for about 2 millenia…
(don't worry though, it will again in about 23 more millenia.)
Not only THAT…but the Sun really DOES travel through 13 constellations…not 12.
So now what?
The simple fact is that the common Sun signs of western astrology…
those conceptual avatars of shared personality traits we're all so familiar (and so used to identifying) with…actually depend upon the astrologic system of Ptolemy…
a system that was close to an aristotelian, scientific accuracy 2 millenia ago…
even if it DID involve a belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth.
And that system is known as Tropical astrology.
The not-so-simple fact is that the Tropical / Ptolemaic Sun Sign you were born under is NOT accurate according to a very busy kind of astrology which seeks be closer to the current scientific facts.
And that's called Sidereal astrology.
Although even THAT'S nowhere near to the kind of accuracy that would be involved by adding the 13th constellation to the zodiac.
This whole thing isn't a question of comparing Outlook to Google Calendars…
Hell…it's not even a question of apples and oranges.
The good news is that you don't have to subscribe to any sidereal theory or astronomical fact…
or even worry about Ophiuchus…
and you can still be considered rational!!!
(well, sorta…)
The bad news is that you're already considered irrational for even being curious about astrology in any way, shape or form.
Still sounds problematic and confusing, no?
Maybe you're even feeling a little ignorant or annoyed right about now.
Well…that's pretty much what the no-news-news (and so much of what passes for journalism these days) seems to be about.
What it really amounts to is an effort to create sensation by quietly taking a few facts out of one context, and noisily dropping them into another.
The biggest noise being the sound of a hammer, as they take the square facts of astronomy and pretend innocence while trying to fit them into the oddly shaped holes of tropical astrology.
The implication being that the problem lies in the fact that there's something wrong with the hole.
Except that they've slyly (er, I mean editorially) removed the relevant facts of tropical astrology from those very same holes without telling you.
(Hey…no holes, no story, right?)
Modern astronomy successfully debunked Ptolemaic / Geocentric astronomy back in the 17th century…in the person of Galileo.
And he made quite a name for himself…through the power of the press, in fact.
The printing press, that is.
And what we have here is the case of another astronomer essentially trying to do the same thing…
except that he doesn't seem to have any astronomy to debunk…
so he's trying to debunk astrology…
And that's the context that I want to clarify…
So you can just stop reading here if you agree with the astronomers…
I'm not looking to convince you of anything.
Hell…you might not even like my explanation.
I'm just gonna fill in a few holes most astrologers don't even know are there…
and I swear I wasn't the one who created them…
All I'm gonna do is create a little clarity by knocking together some very interesting facts…
and I'm not even gonna use a hammer…
When it comes to candy…most of us (I suspect) tend to think that we’re selective and choosy…
something that Jean Shepherd was able to wax somewhat…um…sweetly over…
And maybe the same thing applies when it comes to other kinds of candy stores…
like this one:
I hate photographing people behind their back…
but I see an awful lot of pathos in this image…
most of it projected from the more painful regions of my own unconscious, naturally…
just look at the body language…
I found this kindred spirit staring at that tantalizing wall of slightly stale, yet still magical, adult candy and recognized the source of the pathos…
that not-so-secret worm that gnaws at the heart of lots of photographers (like me)…
which is self-doubt and resignation…
i.e. “I so desperately want the satisfaction of taking compelling photographs…but when push comes to shove, I all too often back down and never even try.”
yet hope springs eternal…
and yes, there’s always next time…
which…as clichés and consolations go, may or may not suffice…
but they’re a helluva lot cheaper than a new camera…
but then this is merely the stage of pathos…
not quite catastrophe…
and certainly not obscenity…
although it’s one helluva slippery slope…
which is what I tend to recognize whenever I see the sad corollary to this image…
which amounts to any would-be photographer with a camera around his neck, and the lens cap on his camera…
I mean…
there they stand advertising their not-so-secretly overwhelming desire to capture some spectacular, satisfying image…
and somewhat sheepishly carrying around the (often expensive) means to do so right in front of them…
but then what?
well then you just have to realize that we all actually die more than a little by virtue of them stuffing their creativity…
i.e. keeping a cheap plastic lid on it…
now potential subjects may consider that lens cap reassuring…
since it works like a leash…
even if it’s more like a condom…
but to a photographer, that’s no condom…
it’s an abortion.
plain and simple.
there’s just no candy sweet enough to console us for disappointing that deep, creative urge within…
regardless of the medium…
there may be all sorts of choices available for drowning the inevitable (if not recognizable) sorrow…
and they all cost us…
but that’s just plain pathos…
it’s that none of the consolations or pain-and-sorrow killers are truly satisfying…
but then that’s the completely paradoxical source of both the sacred…and the obscene.
isn’t it…
So…yesterday was marathon day here in Köln…
and naturally, a great day for street photography…
it’s just that I’m always a little gun-shy when pointing a lens at people without asking…
On the one hand, I feel like it’s the only way to capture the emotional moments I’m drawn to…
but on the other hand, there’s always that risk of pissing people off, and creating a scene I’m not necessarily up for dealing with…
No guts, no glory…of course…
and while this is far from being a remarkable photograph, I’m just enjoying some of the advantages of having gone digital this last year…
one of which being how relatively easy it is to play with cropping…
now I’m a guy who just HATES to crop…
but without cropping (and this handy-dandy super-duper zoom), I couldn’t possibly find the composition I was looking for without being far too obvious and intrusive…
See…not only do I hate to crop…but I also hate the idea of hiding from my subjects…
I’m used to using a 50 mm lens for working up close and personal…and usually head on…
so while this wild 18-200 zoom business gives me an awful lot of leeway…
I was still standing less than 2 meters from this group…
close…
but not a cigar…
At first, I was pretty annoyed with the persistent intrusion of camera-guy there in the middle…
he had posted up on that unfortunately conspicuous spot…
although once I started shooting, he quickly tried to hide himself behind the tree…
(uh…I guess he figured…just like a little kid…that if I couldn’t see his eyes, then he was completely hidden from view…)
and then I was disappointed that there was so much space between the three wise men and the lady…
not to mention the too-strong, dark vertical of that tree separating them the way it does…
But then in the cropping I found that I could nearly disembody the face on the far right…
and that seemed to be just the thing to turn this into a kind of biblical composition…
with camera-guy playing an unexpectedly pivotal role as a kind of sinister presence in the middle…
I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going to find the best art-historical match to illustrate this…
but I was pretty much thinking Giotto…all the way…
and then I found this satisfying little snippet of a fresco from the Arena Chapel in Padova…
Okay…so camera-guy is no longer in the middle…
I guess he…um…got shifted over to the far left in a medieval photoshop maneuver…
But hey!
Giotto even put in a couple of verticals…
gee…
if only my tree had been maybe a birch instead of a locust…huh?
d’ya think?
I’ve posted a new dream interpretation at kristo.com
it’s about breastfeeding…
and so I have some very new insights to share…
especially about red hair in dreams…